This time the violence hits home

3:30 PM,
Sep. 19, 2013

Eugene Robinson

Written by

Eugene Robinson
Columnist

Washington was under siege on Monday, with SWAT teams racing through the streets and military helicopters circling overhead. Not immediately threatened, however, was the complacency that allows our elected officials to argue endlessly about the threats we face rather than work together to lessen them.

"We are confronting yet another mass shooting," President Obama said at midday, "and today it happened on a military installation in our nation's capital."

A few miles away at the historic Washington Navy Yard, authorities were just beginning to assess the carnage left by a gunman who ...